In several weeks Waddington's will begin a shockingly progressive venture for a venerable Toronto auction house with a history going back to 1850 — a contemporary data base. And it'll be free.

Free? What a concept. The art auction business is where you find a Tom Thomson painted pond costing double any privately owned real bass lake in Muskoka.

And nothing's free at Waddington's Concrete Contemporary Art Auction Tues. March 5 with 94 works from 80 Canadian artists including a pair of Michael Snow pieces previously in private hands and Satellite Cities (Yellow/Green With Dark City) (2007) an absolutely mesmerizing acrylic painting from Winnipeg artist Wanda Koop that imagines the Canadian landscape as if seen through Martian eyes.

Nevertheless Waddington's up-coming data base — filled with facts about contemporary artists and their art-work — indicates how the company's business is attitude shaping as much as it is art-selling. And, yes, it's also in the business of keeping up. Heffel Fine Art the Vancouver-based house dominant in the Canadian market, has long had a formidable data base with 7,500 works of art sold over the past five years and price lists. Waddinton's, also like Heffel's, is already active in the on-line auctions

&quot;So we are sort of curating things,&quot; says Stephen Ranger, head of Waddington's business development. &quot;Heffel is the giant in the field. But we can do things on a smaller scale. We can look at emerging markets and do something with them. Are we tastemakers? No, but we are able to direct the market in a certain way.&quot;

And Ranger believes the way is toward post-1970 Canadian art which &quot;is a bargain in terms of international prices,&quot; he says. &quot;Every other country has an auction market for contemporary work. Why don't we? We have a great private gallery system and a strong public gallery system. What we're doing is providing an entry level for those who want to buy contemporary Canadian art.&quot;

This is not an idea new to Ranger or Waddington's, for sure. In recent years David Silcox, Sotheby's Canadian president, tried to encourage auction clients to buy contemporary work rather than wait for the dwindling number of Thomson, Group of Seven and other works from that earlier generation to come on the market. (Scarcity jacks sales up enormously. A Thomson painting, Burnt Area With Ragged Rocks went for $934,000 at a Sotheby's 2006 fall auction, almost four times its pre-sale estimate.)

However Sotheby's is now entirely out the live auction business in Canada as Silcox announced early in February. Dealing directly with private sales to clients is his preferred way to go.

&quot;For Sotheby's, getting out was pretty much about the numbers,&quot; says Ranger, &quot;particularly when you think that the entire Canadian auction market — somewhere between $50 million and $60 million on a good year — is worth about the same as one B-list painting sold in New York.&quot; (In international terms, where Sotheby's remains a major player, the new rule of thumb is that a major contemporary painting costs about the same as a well located Park Avenue apartment, according to Tobias Meyer, Sotheby's lead New York auctioneer. Remember, the stunning $163,500 (Cdn) paid for young Vancouver artist's Brian Jungen's Prototype for New Understanding #5 in 2007 at a Toronto auction came from an anonymous bidder in New York. )

Sotheby's exit is good news for Waddington's expecting to see a significant increase in its current 25 per cent share of the Canadian at market, as it is for Heffel's with its present 60 per cent share.

Waddington's is particularly bullish about contemporary work following the success it feels it had with its debut 2012 Contemporary Art Auction which netted $250,000 from sales of 85 per cent of the 74 works up for grabs. One Canadian art auction insider says Waddington's was &quot;a little overly ambitious&quot; last year, And admittedly some work by star names such as the late Montreal artist Betty Goodwin failed to sell at expected prices.

&quot;But what was so interesting is that we had 150 bidders at that first contemporary auction and 100 of them were new clients,&quot; says Ranger.

Even without Sotheby's, the art auction business has competition from gallery-driven art fairs &quot;although that has less to do with us than with the way galleries now do business,&quot; says Ranger. &quot;Art fairs represent sort of a Renaissance for galleries,&quot; says Allan Lochhead, publisher of Slate Art Gallery Guide. Mega-star artists can always conduct as solo auction as Damien Hirst did selling some $270 million worth of his art at Sotheby's in London in 2008.

&quot;My own interest in contemporary work came from doing the Casey House Art With Heart auction for 20 years, and from seeing what is not on the market, &quot; says Ranger, who's also one of the country's leading auctioneers for charity. &quot;Well, it's a question of how you put that material out there and present it. For the Concrete Contemporary auction we're placing (Cape Dorset, Nunavut artist) Annie Pootoogook early in the catalogue (page 7 in fact) where another house might place a more famous artist. It's the way to do it.&quot;

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